In the 2008 federal election campaign Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams ran a campaign of "Anybody But Conservatives", but today on Power Play he spoke quite nicely about the Prime Minister and said that relations between Newfoundland and Ottawa have improved significantly since "the dark times". If the wounds have healed and Tories start voting Conservative again on the rock, that could pose big problems for a few Liberals. Shiboom Coady is only a member of parliament because of Danny's little ABC stunt, as the Tories fell from 16,644 votes in 2006 to 4,324 in her riding in 2008 when she won her first election. What is interesting is that while the Tory vote went down by over 12,000 votes, Shiboom only experienced an increase of 2,625 votes over her 2006 mark. People were not leaving the blue tent for the red tent.
With the sea change in New Brunswick and Danny Williams playing nice with Stephen Harper, the Liberal's Atlantic caucus should be concerned. The end result of Danny's little tantrum back in 2008 was that many voters simply stayed home and didn't vote. People said to themselves "I can vote for Shiboom or not vote at all", and they chose not to participate in democracy. I also expect that the Newfoundland Liberals may experience some backlash from the gun registry survival, given their proud tradition of hunting and fishing.
I don't know if Don Martin is now the permanent host of Power Play, but he is so bad at hosting that it is comical. There is some entertainment value like how some people only watch American Idol during the tryout session to see the train wrecks. When I say Don Martin is bad, I am not talking about ideology. I strongly disagree with some of his opinions, but I agree with him a lot more than I do Taber or Soloman. Don Martin is just terrible at hosting. It pains me to say it, but I'd rather watch Soloman than Martin. In a perfect world there would be a host on television that I actually enjoy watching, but sadly we do not live in a perfect world...
Fortunately the superior court ruling will allow some defeated MPs a new career path without fear of criminal persecution.
ReplyDeleteWhat a hypocrite. I guess hurricanes make strange bedfellows...
ReplyDeleteHow many seats do they have in Newfoundland? 7? Those could all go Conservative next election, add the one NDP MP in Edmonton and some rural ridings....MAJORITY!
ReplyDeletewho is Shiboom coady? It's Siobahn, pronounced Shivonne. Not sure if you're being facetious but I figured I'd point it out regardless...
ReplyDeleteIf you want a true electoral understanding of what's going on in NL, let me lay it out for you. Anywhere outside the city traditionally votes Liberal, and in NL that's usually because of traditional high unemployment rates and Liberal federal spending promises. Metro St. John's has traditionally been strong PC/Conservative territory.
Fabian Manning took John Efford's riding in 2006 because he was viewed as something as a pragmatic patriot for standing up to Premier williams over a crab fishery issue and subsequently losing his position over his stance, which won him quite a bit of respect amongst the population. Victory in that riding would have been fairly difficult otherwise. He lost his seat as a result of the ABC campaign, essentially.
St. John's is the interesting story; Jack Harris and Siobahn Coady represent the city as NDP and Liberal MP's, respectively. Now the ABC campaign did reduce Tory support in the province, but long-term MP's Norm Doyle and Loyola Hearn had also decided to retire from politics, leaving their seats up for grabs.
Jack Harris is a well respected local politician who is viewed as being fairy principled and trustworthy regardless of your views on his politics. He was a federal NDP MP years ago and a long time provincial MHA, and the combination of his character, a retiring MP, a poorly known conservative candidate and the ABC campaign led to his election. He will be tough to beat barring a popular conservative candidate and changing federal political tides in the Tories' favour.
Siobahn ran against Loyola in previous elections and lost both times by the margin of a few thousand votes, but did quite respectably. She's a well known local businesswoman who runs a genetic research company, called Newfound Genomics. Decreased Tory turnout due to ABC definitely played a factor in her victory, but again we have a retiring Tory MP and a poorly known Tory Candidate combined withe the ABC vote.
I'm not sure if the Gun registry issue will anger enough rural Newfoundland voters to switch from their entrenched Liberal voting patterns but it will be interesting to see. I also wonder how permanent the ABC campaign damage will be in the next election, and if voters will still remain angry. In any case, all politics is local and the Tories would do well to search for local well-known personalities if they want a victory.
Hope you found some of this interesting!
Sorry anonymous, I come from the Don Cherry school of mispronounciating funny names. You name your daughter Shiobahn, and I get to call her Shiboom. This version was derived by morphing her name with Ricky Martin's "she bangs" into one.
ReplyDeleteI'm an expert in nameology...
I suppose you could go with Shibangs, but Shiboom is more classy.
ReplyDeleteWhy was Danny Williams so angry at the Conservatives in 2008, anyway? I didn't really understand, except for the fact that he was more of a PC type and hated the Harper Conservatives.
ReplyDeleteWilliams was upset because Harper broke an agreement to pay out a substantial environmental subsidy - a subsidy that Newfoundland worked to qualify for and was counting on.
ReplyDeleteBeing the first NL politician to truly stand up to federal and Quebec exploitation (fisheries, energy, minerals), Danny Williams has become unfathomably popular and will remain so. He's also lowered taxes and is a famously tough negotiator when dealing with public service unions. Of course you'll never read that on Blogging Tories - except from the odd Newfoundlander, which is a shame.
Too bad incisor you dont tell the whole story.Danny was given the choice of the old subsidy or the new one,which all provinces were getting.He wanted both.Get your friggin facts straight before you comment.
ReplyDeleteVery true bertie on what you said.
ReplyDeleteFor a premiere to embark on a mission dictating to his citizens "vote ABC" - the people did as they were told, To me, that is not considered "Freedom of choice." Yet, losing seats in NFLD, the PM,SH, elected NFLD'S Fabian Manning to the Senate.
If Williams went around saying ABL and no NFLDers were elected; bet your bottom dollar, the liberals would not appoint a NFLDer to the Senate.
Danny Williams had no business either dictating to liberals from NL how to vote in the HOC.